Grammar Police
by Rachel C. Astrid
Summary: Castle shows up in uniform at Beckett's place for a playdate of his own design, but she's not known as one of New York's finest for nothing.


Notes: Short and sweet. Or sneaky, if it's Beckett we're talking about. Er, about whom we're talking. Oh, no, looks like Castle needs to come and arrest me…

Bitty spoiler for 5x09 "The Final Frontier"

* * *

He thinks he's clever. He shows up one night at her apartment in a pretty convincing cop costume (which she later hopes to God isn't somebody's real uniform).

She opens her front door to find his imposing figure filling the frame, one hand on the pistol in his holster and one at eye-level flashing a custom badge that reads _Grammar Police_. He holds the stance, dedicated to his vision of this role, even as she looks unimpressed and unsurprised.

"What's the matter?" she asks, her voice even and unaffected as she tugs him inside by the shirt and closes the door behind him. "Writer Vest not enough for you anymore?"

He looks like he wants to roll his eyes and complain but somehow still refuses to break character. He's got a warrant for her arrest, he tells her, and he can't wait to frisk her. Even better, he can't wait to hear her groan at all of his dirty cop innuendos and—ooh, look, another one right there. Eyebrow waggle.

She does groan, and he only smiles.

"Castle," she sighs, "what are you doing this for?"

He perks up at that. "That's a UPDP," his faux cop-voice informs her: "Unauthorized Possession of a Dangling Preposition." He clears his throat and suggestively glances down his own body and for a second she wonders if he's wearing tear-away pants. He sounds hardly regretful as he looks up and tells her, "I'm going to have to _take you_ . . . downtown."

Waggle, waggle.

Really, the man can make silly sexy anytime, and if she's honest, the heat Castle's throwing off is starting to gather below her belt, but why cooperate when it would be so much more fun to leave _him_ dangling a while longer?

She leans in close; leans against his chest to open the top button or two on his shirt, giving him the benefit of her sultry voice. "How come you get to be the cop?"

He holds up the badge again and squeaks: "_Grammar_ Police." He clears his throat, obviously attempting to get back into character as best as he can while Beckett is effortlessly doing her thing.

She gives him a fighting chance and releases him; takes a step back.

"If you really want," he offers charitably, his voice low and confident again, "the next time you correct _my _grammar, you can use the cuffs on me."

She rests her hands on her hips as she listens to him; sucks in one cheek to nibble at it like she's plotting something, but all she offers him is a conciliatory, "Deal?"

By the apprehension in his facial expression, she can tell that there are warning bells going off in his head. If she's as good as she thinks she is (knows she is), he's got to be picturing her long, bare legs and Lieutenant Chloe's short, tight dress wriggling sexily into view only to reveal the gruesome face of a space monster—the one and only occasion that she has intentionally and rather successfully turned him off. He's got to be picturing a _Nebula 9 _marathon that—he's since complained on more than one occasion—still plays reruns in his head just to taunt him in her absence.

But right now he's cocky and can't help himself. "Deal," he agrees, and he doesn't hesitate before resuming his no-nonsense cop talk. "Now, up against the wall," he orders her. "Spread your legs and put your hands up where I can see them."

She stares at him for a good long beat before humoring him and complying, putting her palms against the wall above her head and spreading her feet wide apart. He caresses her curves in no kind of legal frisking she's ever seen, all too obviously interested in what she's actually concealing beneath her casual clothes.

"You have the right to remain silent," he huskily recites for her, as though there should be some kind of novelty in hearing the words in her lover's bedroom voice. "Anything you say can and will be used—"

But she's got tactical training to spare. "Knock, knock," she singsongs over the Miranda Rights, all the while maintaining the stance of a cornered suspect.

Castle is momentarily caught off-guard by her unscripted and unorthodox interruption. The man has his vices. One of them is that he _cannot _resist participating in a joke to save his life. "Uh—who's there?"

She glances over her shoulder at him. He is so _easy._ "To."

"To who?"

"To _whom_," she enunciates, wondering if he might literally kick himself. She lowers her hands from the wall and throws him a very self-satisfied, over-the-shoulder smile. Then she simply pivots on her foot, grabs the bad cop (no, really, he's a decent investigator but he makes an _awful _cop) by the lapel, and leads him toward the bedroom.

"Oh, you play dirty," Castle whines from behind her. "Come on, Beckett. You have to honor the form. That's how a knock-knock joke _works_."

She won't try to hide her pleasure at this turn of events. Until now she thought flipping them from the bottom was her favorite power-play. "Are you really going to fight this?"

"No," he murmurs, following faithfully, even while his voice gradually gains power in indignation: "As long as you admit that was coercion. I'm here under duress. I'm protected from self-incrimination. I—"

"Mr. Castle," she says, turning suddenly and deftly removing the cuffs from his belt. "I do believe you have the right to remain silent."

/


End file.
